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The problem with in-store comparisons like that is it is easy for Sony and the shop to game the system so that the 4K TV looks better than the comparison. Just display different content, tweak settings on the TVs (lower contrast, saturation and sharpening on HDTV, bump up the same on 4K), use lower bitrate HDTV stream than Bluray, etc. etc. etc.

They do the same every day to convince you to buy the more expensive (read: higher margin) TVs, which have lots of buzz words in the ad.

Having said that, I've seen 4K in person as well, and it is incredible. I'll be upgrading my 1080p projector to 4K next time it dies - if there is a distribution method for 4K movies (physical preferred).

Submitted
by
MotorMachineMercenar
on Sunday September 22, 2013 @12:39PM

MotorMachineMercenar (124135) writes "As I went to buy a nice bottle of wine at a shop in Amsterdam, I was shocked when the shopkeeper told me "we don't accept cash, only cards." This was the second time I've run into a shop like this. He further told me that these types of shops will become more common, as it is "safer." Safer for who?

Do we really want everything that we buy to be a matter of record to be recorded and saved for indefinite period of time by banks and credit card companies? Amsterdam especially has services and goods on sale which might not look too good on a credit card bill. Even if all you bought was perfectly legal, who knows what conclusions current and future databases or officials will make? Will I receive an "enhanced" security check if I buy box cutters on the way to the airport?

While such shops are rare now, they might become more popular unless people are aware of the loss of privacy, and potential for abuse by unscrupulous people with access to the data. At least currently I have the choice of paying cash. I don't want that choice to be taken away, replaced by an ever-wider reach of the surveillance state."

For instance, the 'what3words' for the famous Peter Pan statue in London's Hyde Park is 'union.prop.enjoy'

What's wrong with "peter.pan.statue.hyde.park.london"?

It works great for such famous, unique places. But it is impossible to describe a bend in a random stream in Siberia with three words and have someone know which bend in which stream you're talking about - and that's what the site is for.

MotorMachineMercenar (124135) writes "Effi (Electronic Frontier Finland) has arranged an art exhibit (in Finnish) with several artists as part of a grassroots copyright reform campaign. A citizen-written petition (in Finnish, summary in English) on an official government site — similar to the White House petition site in the US — asks for "sanity in copyright law". It has 40,000 signatures, with 10,000 more required for consideration by the the Finnish parliament. There is one more week to gather signatures until deadline.

The coordinator points out that the exhibit does not advocate piratism, since artists "need to get paid" for their art. Instead, the exhibit features works which question the sanity of punishing pirates with similar harshness as aggravated assault, for example. Related, the petition calls for reducing the classification of piratism from a crime to a misdemeanor."

Mr Scott doesn't get to make that call. He's the director, but the viewer interprets the film.

And he made the same mistake later with Prometheus. He gave some hackneyed explanation for the story - it had something to do with Jesus of all people ffs -, which I violently disagreed and stuck to my own opinion - has to do with genetic technology and creating sentient weapons we can't control.

See, that's what makes a good movie: you get to form your own opinion which can be opposed to what the creator had in mind, yet both can be perfectly valid.

Ambiguity is part of the beauty of the film, which has kept us discussing the film for quarter of a century. Answering it definitively won't make BR any better, and can only detract from it. Of course us fans can just ignore the existence of BR2 and not admit it to the BR canon - like Terminator 3.

Besides not even the creators can't even agree on it. I believe Ridley Scott thinks he's a replicant, while Harrison Ford doesn't.

MotorMachineMercenar (124135) writes "Google has apparently introduced a new feature to track user behavior in the revamped Google Chat, called Hangouts.

A friend of mine sent me a link, incidentally about an MIT study about the futility of folio hats in blocking the thought police. I use Chrome for Gmail, but being the folio-hat -wearing type, I do all my other browsing in a tightly locked down FF. I copy-pasted the link to FF, and noticed that there was flash of a Google URL before it went to the right URL.

After pasting the link to a note, I noticed it's a Google referral link, similar to the ones most (all?) links on Google search are — in case you weren't aware. So now Google knows who sent what link to whom. The only way around that is to select the entire link, and copy the text.

Now, I'm aware that by definition of me being on a Google platform they implicitly know our conversations. But the fact that they bother to make a referral link means there is even more datamining going on behind the scenes than what we already knew of."

MotorMachineMercenar (124135) writes "Google moving all their services under the same TOS was the final straw for me, and I started taking my online privacy seriously. My resolve has been reinvigorated due to reports of people getting on no-fly lists due to tasteless jokes online, fired for jokes overheard in meatspace reported on Twitter, and the likelihood of everything I do online being tracked, stored, cataloged and cross-referenced increasing due to cloud storage and other online services.

I guarantee something I've said online could be taken out of context and used against me, someone I've been in contact will become a socially unacceptable person, or maybe some of my legal online activities will be part of a character assassination in the hands of a disgruntled ex, or if I ever decide to run for office. Social mores change so rapidly these days, that something that was fine just a few years ago could be compared to bloody murder these days. Who knows what I do today will be viewed in ten, twenty years?

My Firefox has Ghostery, AdBlock Plus, DoNotTrackMeandCustomizeGoogle add-ons installed to limit my exposure to different trackers, exploits, ads, and spying. This only works on Firefox, though. Unfortunately so many add-ons break some websites that I use regularly. For those I use Opera.

I still have Gmail since it's a really good service. I use Chrome for Gmail-only activities so that my other browsing habits are not easily tracked by Google. Getting rid of Gmail, other Google services, and my Android phone would probably be the biggest step in improving my privacy — but Google is not the only aggregator out there.

While setting up the scheme above is not complicated, there must be an easier way. I'd like to use just one browser, not get ads, not get tracked, and ideally get a non-unique result on EFF's Panopticlick — my (perhaps mis-guided) gold standard for privacy.

I don't mind spending a few hours to set up a private proxy or spending some money on a hardware proxy. But while I'm tech savvy, I don't understand proxies etc. well enough to make an informed decision how well and what kind of threats they do protect me from — and what other measures I need to take.

Therefore I'd like to ask you to help me and others put us in the right direction. What is a workable solution to strengthen online privacy, lock up my browsing habits, and separate my numerous online identities?"